Exchange Rate $79,640 | Block height 972945

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On the wall of a pub near Galway, Sam Callahan found a framed poster called “The Price of a Pint.” It lists what a Guinness cost in Ireland, year by year, starting in 1900.

By 1993, a pint cost about 136 times as much. Measured in Guinness, the currency had lost more than 99% of its purchasing power.

Dollar savers have experienced the same erosion of purchasing power. A nickel in 1926 bought roughly what a dollar buys today.

This steady loss of purchasing power is built into monetary policy. Even the official inflation target calls for prices to rise 2% each year, while inflation since 2020 has averaged more than 4% annually.

Governments have long used monetary debasement to finance spending, passing the cost to anyone holding the currency. The dollar’s reserve status offers little comfort when the alternatives are simply losing value faster.

Sound money allows savers to benefit as technology makes goods cheaper to produce. With bitcoin’s supply capped at 21 million, a more productive economy means more goods and services measured against the same fixed supply of bitcoin.

Saving should give us a greater share of future prosperity. Bitcoin makes that possible without requiring a central bank to cooperate.

J.P. Morgan Asset Management released its 2027 Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions, its outlook for major assets over the next 10 to 15 years. For the first time, the report includes a return range for bitcoin.

Coverage of the report puts bitcoin’s base case at 10% a year, compared with 7.5% for U.S. large-cap stocks, 5.5% for gold, and 7.0% for a 60/40 stock-and-bond portfolio. The bank assumes 55% annual volatility, with a bear case of -11.2% a year and a bull case of 16.6%.

The report describes bitcoin as “a hedge against monetary easing” that “tracks global money supply growth,” and notes that its volatility “has dampened.”

A decade ago, bitcoin would barely have figured in this exercise; today, one of the world’s most influential financial institutions puts it at the top of the list. Institutional investors are being given an increasingly clear reason to own it.

The first of Germany’s Sparkassen, the country’s public savings banks, introduced “Krypto – powered by Deka” in their mobile banking app. Customers with a checking account can open a trading account with DekaBank, the group’s securities house, and buy bitcoin for a flat €0.99 per trade plus a spread, with liquidity provided by Boerse Stuttgart Digital.

Each Sparkasse chooses its own start date. More than 230 banks, about two-thirds of the network, have signaled interest, and the savings bank association expects 30 to 40 more to go live each month through mid-2027. The network serves tens of millions of Germans.

In a report published Tuesday, Fidelity Digital Assets research analyst Zack Wainwright found that companies have raised more than $7 billion through perpetual preferred stock to fund bitcoin purchases. These dividend-paying shares have no maturity date, and the proceeds have financed purchases of 135,979 bitcoin as of October 5, including more than 95,000 over a three-month stretch in the spring.

Wainwright identifies the securities as a new source of bitcoin demand that could draw capital from the roughly $150 trillion global fixed-income market.

The same day, Strive closed an upsized $630 million IPO of its SATS preferred stock: 7 million shares at $90, paying 15% a year on a $100 stated amount, with dividends scheduled every business day starting November 9. Strive says it will use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, including bitcoin purchases. The week before, it bought 1,223 bitcoin, bringing its holdings to 36,818.

Strategy, meanwhile, spent $193.1 million buying back its own STRC preferred shares and $22.1 million on 267 bitcoin, bringing its holdings to 848,517.

Investors who would never buy bitcoin directly are helping finance its purchase through dividend-paying shares. This opens another route from the enormous fixed-income market into an asset capped at 21 million, with treasury companies absorbing coins that would otherwise be available to buyers. Preferred shareholders hold a claim on the company; the bitcoin itself sits in the company’s treasury.

On Tuesday, advocacy group Stand With Crypto released a report recording 10,092 complaints from 9,803 people over 90 days, from May to August, about British banks blocking or limiting payments to digital asset exchanges. Lloyds Banking Group drew the most complaints at 2,297, followed by Barclays at 1,569 and NatWest at 1,278.

Barclays and HSBC UK cap these transfers at £2,500 per payment and £10,000 per 30 days. Six banks, including Starling, TSB, and Chase UK, reportedly block them entirely.

The UK’s new licensing regime for digital asset firms is not expected until around October 2027. It does not address whether banks must allow customers to transfer money to those firms.

Restricting bitcoin purchases also protects bank deposits by limiting customers’ ability to move savings outside the banking system. It is a practical demonstration of why self-custody matters. Once bitcoin is in your own wallet, a bank no longer decides how much you may hold or where you may send it.

Switzerland’s financial regulator FINMA approved the country’s first spot bitcoin ETF for retail investors, structured as a regulated fund that holds bitcoin directly, although the issuer has not been named.

Revolut received a digital asset license in Gibraltar for a new entity that will extend its bitcoin services to more international markets.

Latvia could allow residents to pay taxes with digital assets as early as 2027, according to an adviser to the prime minister, following legislation that taxes withdrawals only when they exceed the amount deposited.

AnchorWatch opened a Nevada-chartered trust company with a custody arrangement that distributes control of each client’s bitcoin among AnchorWatch, BitGo, and CoinCorner, with fees capped at $10,000 a month.

BlackRock filed for a “managed protection” bitcoin ETF that uses options on its IBIT fund to seek to limit losses to about 10% per period in exchange for capped gains.

Bitcoin Magazine’s Vagabond added Arizona to his merchant map, listing 219 verified businesses in the state that accept bitcoin.

Fold launched Fold Reserve, offering higher bitcoin rewards on card spending and bill payments to members who maintain a $5,000 balance.

Jack Dorsey’s Bitchat, which supports offline messaging over Bluetooth and online messaging through Nostr, topped France’s App Store social networking chart following nationwide protests and a major mobile network outage.

Learn one key idea about bitcoin each week. This week:

In 2003, the Wachowskis released The Animatrix, a collection of short films exploring the world of The Matrix. The two-part “The Second Renaissance,” directed by Mahiro Maeda, traces the conflict between humans and machines, including an economic rivalry.

After a robot’s trial and destruction trigger a violent crackdown, surviving machines establish their own nation, Zero One. They produce better goods at lower prices, their economy grows, and their currency appreciates as human currencies weaken.

The film leaves the mechanics of that currency unexplained, but the economic logic is straightforward. Machines that optimize production would also optimize how they store and transfer the value they create.

They would want a predictable supply, rules they can verify, and payments that require no trusted intermediary. Those are precisely the properties bitcoin offers.

Pierre Rochard explored a related idea in his 2018 essay “Bitcoin Investment Theses”. He imagined refrigerators buying groceries and negotiating with self-driving delivery vehicles, with payments settled over bitcoin’s Lightning Network.

AI agents bring that scenario closer to reality. They may use dollar stablecoins for everyday purchases, much as people use checking accounts, but savings and final settlement call for money whose supply cannot be expanded at a central bank’s discretion.

For that purpose, bitcoin is the logical choice. Its supply is limited to 21 million units, its rules can be checked independently, and its network allows value to move without a central authority approving each transfer.

A machine capable of improving productivity has little reason to keep its savings in money designed to lose purchasing power each year. The same reasoning that leads human savers to bitcoin will lead machines there, too.

Fortunately, people have a head start on Zero One. Humans built bitcoin, humans run its network, and anyone can begin accumulating it today, before the machine economy adds its own demand for a fixed supply.

An increasingly productive economy needs money that preserves the value it creates. bitcoin already provides it, and both human and machine demand will have to compete for the same 21 million.

What did Satoshi Nakamoto embed in bitcoin’s first block?

A. The price of gold
B. A newspaper headline about bank bailouts
C. The Federal Reserve’s interest rate
D. The closing value of the Dow Jones

Check your answer at the end of the page.

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Answer: B. Satoshi embedded a headline from The Times in bitcoin’s first block: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” The message records the financial backdrop against which bitcoin launched.

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